Man-Eater
by NoxedSalvation
Summary: There's more to life in the Star Kingdom of Manticore than Fleet Admiral Lady Dame Honor Stephanie Alexander-Harrington, Steadholder Harrington, Duchess Harrington, Countess White Haven, ever bothered to learn. A different perspective might've been all she needed to understand, and become Comrade Harrington instead. Massive!AU.
1. Chapter 1 Ripped Reality

**Disclaimer: **The "Honor Harrington" series is owned by David Weber. This is not intended as copyright infringement, I make no money by publishing this story. I also know that Mr. Weber frowns upon fanfiction, but since this is an AU of enormous proportions, I don't think my humble efforts contradict the reason he gave for his dislike of fans playing in his universe.

**AN: **Yeah, I'm well aware that "Exterminator" needs a new chapter. A decent chunk of it is done, but this new plot bunny tickled me until I set it free. Don't expect regular updates, I've established that "regularity" is not my style of creative writing.

In addition to the summary, I'd like to inform you that this is not the usual "gun blazing" Harrington yarn, at least not at first. I need to set up the AU in a convincing way, and that's hard to do with retrospective story telling. Later on, our heroine will become more active, even if her enemies will be others than in the original series. This story starts in the year 1872 PD.

**AN 2: **I had to change the two already posted chapters, because I had forgotten a few facts about the Honorverse. The most important change is Honor's age, which I'd given as thirteen in the first version. That's still correct, but it's thriteen terran years (7.5 manticoran years) and not about 22 terran years (13 manticoran), meaning I will refer to her age as "seven" from here on out. This change doesn't include the dates given in PD, since that calendar reckoning is in T- years.

**Summary: **There's more to life in the Star Kingdom of Manticore than Fleet Admiral Lady Dame Honor Stephanie Alexander-Harrington, Steadholder Harrington, Duchess Harrington, Countess White Haven, ever learned. A different perspective might've been all she needed to understand, and become Comrade Harrington. Massive!AU.

**Man- Eater**

Chapter One

Ripped Reality

_Again their faces loomed over her, massive human shaped balloons with something hidden behind them, a secret written into their features. They were titans of misery who would drown her in anguish._

_The ogre- head of her uncle John opened his enormous mouth, and loud words thundered from it, to fall on her like grey boulders from the Copperwalls._

_"Hello Honor, you have grown since I last saw you"._

_The gargantuan eyes of her daddy's brother were shining, and inexplicably, there was water in their corners._

_"Would you like to visit your cousin Devon and Aunt Christine?" he inquired, his voice rumbling like a rock avalanche._

_"Where are mommy and daddy?"_

_She hadn't seen them since morning, and now it was time for dinner._

_John Harrington's broad face sagged, his massive jaw clenched together, and the water she had seen in his eyes started to flow down his cheeks. He was crying!_

_Dread rose up in her and she clutched Tyr, her stuffed Sphinx, to her tiny chest. Time seemed to stop while large drops ran down her uncles pinched face. Finally, he forced himself to speak._

_"Your parents have gone on a long voyage, Honor. Now, please come with me."_

_He stretched his huge arm out to her, but she scrambled back from him, terrified by the strange state of her normally funny uncle and the terrible feelings in her own heart._

_"I want daddy!" _

Honor gasped and set up in her comfortable bed abruptly, her heart beating a staccato of fright and horror against her ribcage.

She hadn't had that dream for a few months now, but it had returned, as it always did, with a vengeance.

Falling back into her soft cushions, she forced herself to calm down. It was only a dream after all, one she had endured dozens of times in the last years. If she couldn't get rid of it permanently, she could at least try to take part of its devastating power away by not falling apart on her family again, as she had done when she was younger.

When she felt under control, the seven year old girl – she would've been thirteen on Earth, due to the much longer manticoran year - stood up and stretched her lankly body. After her morning wash, she changed into training shorts and a t-shirt, put on her jogging shoes and went outside for her daily run.

It was early morning, but both suns stood in the sky already, painting the widespread city landscape of Yawata Crossing in bright colors. Not many people were around at this hour in the docile suburb her family called home, and she loved the short but intense periods of solitude her calisthenics granted her.

She pushed herself, enjoying the feeling of freedom that came with her speed, deeply satisfied by the way her body reacted to the challenge.

Nothing could touch her while she was in her training mindset, not nightmares like the one torturing her frequently, nor even the argument she had with her guardians the evening before, which had most likely triggered the nasty dream.

When she returned to the house an hour later, her pulse was steady like a clock and there was only a slight sheen of sweat on her forehead.

She'd been doing this for nearly one and a half years now, and the combination of her prolong treatments and the physiology of a heavy worlder were enhancing her body in addition to the exercise.

Honor felt as if at least one part of the tasks she had set herself when she was five was pretty much achieved - she had checked the navy requirements for enlistment and was sure she would be more than ready for the physiological side of the tests when the time came.

She entered the bungalow through the kitchen, saw her cousin Devon sitting at the table and watched with amusement as the thirteen year old graduate history student shoveled cereal into his mouth while reading something – most likely some obscure journal article for his thesis – on the pad in front of him.

The slender young man greeted her presence with a mumbled "Morning!" between spoonfuls of his meal, but didn't give any sign that he wished to talk to her further.

"Typical!" she thought with slightly irritated fondness, as she marched back to her room to take a shower.

Devon's head was always in his books, that had been the case even before she came to live with her uncle's family, and now that he was writing his thesis – on the Gryphon uprising, no less – he was seldomly prepared to exchange more than a few words at a time.

When she came out of the wet cell, she toweled herself down, frowning at her reflection in the mirror. Her chest was still flat as a board, and in combination with her angular face and short hair, her figure made her look like a boy.

She didn't like her looks, but whenever her aunt tried to help her with some light makeup or feminine clothing, she rejected her. If she couldn't have the beginnings of womanly curves like many of the other girls at school (even with prolong!), she wouldn't pretend to be something she wasn't.

Sighing at the familiar course her thoughts were following, Honor slipped into her school uniform, took her bag out of the cabinet beside her bed, and went back to the kitchen to have a light snack.

Devon was nowhere to be seen, he had most likely retreated to his study, and her guardians wouldn't be up for at least an hour or two on a Saturday morning, especially after they'd spend the evening at a society function.

Uncle John and aunt Christine were both lecturers at the Royal University of Yawata Crossing, he in modern lit and she in the math faculty.

Yesterdays' event, the inauguration of a new university president, had also been the topic of Honor's argument with her guardians.

They'd wanted to take her with them, to have her meet their colleagues and superiors, to "modestly" praise her good grades, and to secure her a place as an intern for the coming up vacation period at school.

"You can't start early enough with your academic career" her uncle had declared firmly.

Naturally, she didn't want any part of it.

"Why would I want to meet and greet with dozens of boring bureaucrats?" Honor had asked provocatively, starting a row that escalated to raised voices and red faces.

The question she put to her guardians, at first in reasonable terms, then more and more emotional, was this: Why would she, the daughter of a career soldier, want to become a pen pushing teacher at a dusty university?

Her dad had been in the navy, most of her few memories of him had him in his blindingly white surgeon uniform, and the same was true for dozens of pictures of Alfred Harrington she had collected from the clans secure cloud storage.

She may have lost her parents to a freak aircar accident when she wasn't even two years old, but she would honor their memory by following in her dad's footsteps. No posh university position for Honor Harington, regardless of what her well intentioned, but sometimes stifling guardians thought.

Honor consumed three slices of bread topped with cheese and two apples, then packed a few bananas for lunch – she was a growing girl with a Meyerdahl- beta genetic modification, after all.

She punched a quick message into the family computer station, informing her guardians of her whereabouts, and left the house for the public transport station a few blocks away.

It wasn't a school day, but she had to complete an assignment for her ethics class, and needed the resources of the library to do so. At least that was what she told herself while she walked towards the airbus stop.

She didn't want to admit to herself that she wasn't at all interested in seeing her guardians that soon after an uncommonly fierce quarrel with them. Her aunt always gave the understanding and compassionate part, but her uncle was more pushy and made his expectations very clear.

The fight had ended in tears, only the second time she'd cried in front of anyone since Honor had decided over a year before that she wasn't a child anymore, but a navy officer in waiting.

While John and Christine had been at the event, she'd started with the assignment, although it was only due next week.

Trying to push the whole family situation into the back of her mind by doing her homework hadn't helped for long though, because the topic of her assignment was connected to her problem.

The ethics teacher had tasked them to "Describe a person you judge to be heroic, and justify your selection based on an ethical theory of your choice", and Honor had elected to name her own dad.

He was a military hero after all, a man who had been awarded the Osterman Cross for his gallantry in combat. She knew about that because one day 1 ½ years ago, she had found the medal while going through her parents' jewelry when she wanted to dress herself up as a member of the royal house of Winton.

She'd pestered her uncle, who was oftentimes reluctant to talk of her parents - especially his brother - about the strange decoration, until he told her about it.

Her dad, Alfred Harrington, had been a bearer of the second highest manticoran military award!

His actions in combat had earned him an officer's patent too, and despite that, he had chosen to become a doctor. She couldn't imagine anyone who deserved the title of "hero" more than her daddy.

Honor had known that important fact about her dad for a long time by now, but for her homework, she needed more than her uncles word for it. She had to proof it with a newspaper article or something like that, especially because it was her own father she was writing about.

That necessity had finally converged in the back of her head with the need for some distance from her guardians, and brought on her unusual trip across the city.

She had checked the transport lines that could bring her to her school beforehand - normally, her uncle gave her a lift when he went to work and her aunt picked her up in the afternoon.

Honor didn't have to wait long until an airbus flying in the right direction touched down at the station. Entering, she flicked her money card over a sensor board, and took a place in the middle of the vehicle. The fare would be taken out of her spending account.

Living in a city with 1.5 million people could've been uncomfortable, as she knew from her geography and history lessons about other planets, but there was enough space on Sphinx to spread the urban area out over tens of thousands of square miles.

On the other hand, such a huge cityscape made transfer times longer, which meant that it would take the bus about twenty minutes to reach her school.

Said house of learning was a private institution, with a very long intellectual pedigree, carefully chosen by her uncle to give her the best future chances in academia.

Trying to distract herself from such troubling thoughts, she didn't grab her workpad to read, but peered through the window next to her.

The airbus had left the suburbs behind, and took a very different route than her uncle, flying much lower and landing every few minutes. They were passing over an area she'd never seen before, with very tightly packed apartment blocks which looked rather shabby to her eyes.

Many buildings in this neighborhood had grey, dusty walls, which looked to be in in disrepair, a few had even small holes in them where the plastering had fallen off. The doors to those complexes were massive, as if they'd been constructed to keep burglars out.

Other buildings had chaotic graffiti covering the outside of the ground floor, and some of the defacements could be seen even on the flat roofs of the high rises.

The vehicle landed on a wide place between the blocks, and more than a dozen new passengers entered, most of them in some kind of technician overall, with company logos stitched over their hearts and tool belts around their hips.

One of the men, a muscular guy with a three day beard sat down next to her, and started to read on his battered knockoff pad. A cursory look told her that he was a subscriber of the "CD", or "Crossing Dispatch", a cheap newsfax with a reputation for seedy stories and hack journalism.

Her uncle made no secret of his contempt for this kind of media - and the "CD" in particular. It was infamous for "finding" (or rather, inventing) "sex scandals" and regular bogus articles about spacefaring alien species with hunger for human flesh.

Despite herself, she leaned a few centimeters over to get a better look at the story the man was reading. "Medusan sex ritual filmed!" the headline screamed from the screen.

She felt her face flush and looked away quickly, lest he noticed her peeking.

The airbus launched for the next part of the flight, and she gazed out of the window again, trying not to picture what the three legged aliens from the newly annexed Basilisk system did to procreate.

Honor was shocked when they passed over an especially decrepit tower that had a huge graffiti sprayed onto its top. "Down with the King!" it read in red letters, next to a picture of a huge fist that melted down King Roger's crown into slag with a fiercely burning plasma blowtorch.

She felt disquieted by the whole run down quarter, and disgusted by the traitorous message she'd just read. Better to stick to her workpad, she decided, and took it out for the rest of the ride.

When she arrived at the school campus, which was only minutes on foot from the nearest transport point, Honor was surprised by the amount of students around. Sure, they were mostly from the higher grades, but she spotted some of her peers too.

Maybe others were using the facilities – which were open around the clock – for the same reasons as her, namely to escape their family homes.

After she entered the library, using the school ID code in her pad, she took her time to search a free workstation that was remote, finally finding one hidden behind some potted greenery.

She wasn't interested in small talk with any classmates who might've found their way here today, because she wanted to concentrate on her assignment.

Her uncle and aunt might've mostly forgotten about her parents, besides their death days, when they visited the graves, but she, Honor, would bring her dad to the attention of her teacher and class, would make sure that someone else but her remembered him and his heroism.

She opened a search in the costly full access archive of the Yawata Crossing Times the school provided. It was the more reputable newsfax published in the city, compared to the Crossing Dispatch at least.

Honor typed "Alfred Harrington" + "Osterman Cross" into the mask.

To her surprise, the workstation returned more than 30 hits. Eagerly, she began to pursue the information.

The articles were sorted in chronological order, and the first entries were what she had come for: "Local soldier awarded Osterman Cross", or "Harrington Hero rewarded" read the headlines about

her father's combat medal and subsequent promotion.

She copied everything useful onto her own workpad, and scrolled down the display to take a look at the other articles.

"Osterman Cross bearer marries Beowulfian Beauty" was the title of another report, and she smiled wistfully when she saw the accompanying picture of her parents, smiling happily.

After a short announcement of her own birth, one her parents had paid for themselves, she reached the news stories about the accident.

It was hurting her to read even the headlines, but she needed at least one of those articles to round up the presentation about her father.

"Hero dies in tragedy", and "Terrible air car crash leaves little girl orphaned" were only two of several headlines, and she copied both texts without taking closer looks at them.

Following the reports of her parent's deaths, she had to slog through a number of long articles regarding their burial.

Apparently, her dad had received military honors and a seven shot salute.

She didn't read those texts in detail, just the titles and picture descriptions, then copied them to her pad for later.

After about 30 minutes of work, she reached the last dispatch in the search queue.

At first, she was unable to even process what she was reading. It was like a thunderbolt out of blue sky, a shock that hit her totally unprepared.

Something hot began to burn in her stomach and she felt her pulse quicken. Pure rage boiled up in her heart as she read the headline again and again: "Foul play in Harrington crash?".


	2. Chapter 2 Privilege

**Disclaimer: **The "Honor Harrington" series is owned by David Weber. This is not intended as copyright infringement, I make no money by publishing this story. I also know that Mr. Weber frowns upon fanfiction, but since this is an AU of enormous proportions, I don't think my humble efforts contradict the reason he gave for his dislike of fans playing in his universe.

**AN: **I got things rolling much faster than I thought, so conflict is coming up!

Chapter 2.

Privilege

When Honor's ability to think clearly finally returned after a minute of dumbstruck agony, she opened the file containing the offending newsfax report with haste.

It had been published under the name "George Danton" - probably a pseudonym, as most crime reporters at the "Times" used one - three weeks after her parents' death, and was more a stub than an article, just a dozen sentences and a picture of the crash site near Twin Forks.

_"Foul play in Harrington crash?" _

_The "Times" has learned that the tragic death of highly decorated local hero__ Lieutenant____Alfred Harrington and his wife Dr. Allison Chou Harrington has come under intense scrutiny by Twin Forks authorities. According to sources close to the investigation, the aircar crash that killed the two medical doctors had first been ruled by personnel in the field as the result of a pilot error. _

_But when constables tried to retrieve the air traffic control logs for the crash site in Sector 233A, just hours after the tragedy that left a one year old girl orphaned, they found that all data had been lost due to what officials called a "glitch in the sensor matrix". _

_Captain Preston Raskop, chief of the Twin Forks air- traffic bureau, called the loss of information "Very unfortunate in this case, but farely routine for outlaying areas". He asserted that "Software problems happen constantly in low traffic regions, because the system was programmed for urban environments ." _

_An infotech who works for Hauptman Integrated Computing, the supplier of the air- traffic system, denied Raskop's claims to this reporter under condition of anonymity. According to this source, the Captain's claims "sound spurious in the extreme for anyone who knows the software in question."_

_In the course of the constabulary's inquest, it transpired that not only the traffic control systems "failed" to record any data of the crash. _

_An optical surveillance sattelite, which the __Sphinx Forestry Service uses to check on treecat clans living in the woodland underneath air control sector 233A also had a "coincidental" and unexplained four hour "gap" in its dataset around the time of the Harringtons' death._

_It is a horiffic irony in the light of this unexplained "accident", that just weeks before the young pairs' untimely demise, an interesting memo (a copy is in the possession of the "Times") started to circulate in the Twin Forks air- traffic bureau. _

_It cautioned operators that a hightened amount of illegal races using luxury aircars were taking place in Sector 233A._

_(The "Times" will keep you informed on further developments in this case)_

Honor put her face into her hands and tried to calm the swirling emotions running through her head.

She couldn't remember ever feeling so much at once, from outraged hate of the person or persons responsible for her parents' death, to simmering anger at her aunt and uncle, who never told her a word about all this.

It was important to think the implications of the article through systematically and logically though, as she'd learned to do in her language classes just a few months ago.

The most important fact was that there was no actual proof of anything. The journalist had build a convincing case that something iffy had been going on, had darkly hinted that someone was working behind the scenes to surppress data that might show what really happened.

But neither the constabluary nor the reporter himself seemed to have any publishable information about the people involved, just very thin conjectures about aircar racing in the area.

At least that had been the case when the article was written, nearly six years ago, Honor realized with a jolt.

She needed to find out if there had been any follow up dispatches that hadn't been displayed in her original search for some reason.

Turning back to the workstation with ferverisly shining eyes, she started to hack new commands into the search mask, fingers flying.

"Harrington Crash" + "crime" didn't bring up any new hits and "Harrington murder" or "Harrington investigation" remained equally without result.

She ran as many combinations and synonyms as she could think of, but nothing produced any new information. Even widening the search to other newsfaxes like the "CD" and smaller outlets did no good.

When more than half an hour had past without results, Honor leaned back in her chair disappointedly.

Had someone really killed her parents, hidden the evidence and had gotten away with it? What were the investigators and this "George Danton" thinking by just letting it all go?

She sat back upright swiftly as a new idea shot through her brain.

It might've been impossible to find more info about the crash and the official inquiry directly, but what about a more roundabout approach?

Entering the name "George Danton" into the "Times" archive search spat up literally thousands of files, starting with an absurd report about a near- asphyxiation at a local burger eating contest from five years before Honor's birth.

She wasn't interested in the journalist's earlier career though, only in what he'd written after that devastating article about her mom and dad.

Jumping to the end of the extremely long listing, she found something worthwhile – albeit ominous - at long last.

"Foul play in Harrington crash?" had been "Danton's" very last piece written for the Times.

A shiver ran down her spine when she contemplated the odds of that happening purely coincidentally.

Without much hope, she began a broader search for "George Danton" at other newsfaxes and in the general net, and as she'd expected, nothing showed up. It was as if the man had left not only the "Times", but also Sphinx proper.

Or at least, he'd stopped to use his pseudonym.

Re- reading the article brought the only other name mentioned in it into Honor's focus: Captain Preston Raskop.

A few quick finger taps later, she knew that mysteriously losing important data for a possible homicide investigation hadn't hurt the man's career at all.

He was a vize- admiral now, responsible for the whole traffic control net of Sphinx's northern hemisphere. There was even a short bio of him on the bureau's own page, mostly meaningless drivel about his "dedication to the public's savety".

The text was accompanied by a portrait picture, showing a huge, red faced man in an uniform that was slightly too tight for him, standing in front of a dozen manned control stations.

Other available information on Raskop was nearly as useless as his official PR, showing him presiding over countless formal occasions, like openings of new traffic infrastructure and such.

More interesting were the articles mentioning Raskop's attendance at society events, often in company with his wife, who the 'faxes named as Circe Bonbour, second daughter of the Duke of Shadow Vale.

Honor's attention sharpened when one report mentioned that the pair's wedding "six years ago" had come "as a surprise for everyone", ostensibly because the Bonbours rarely - if ever - married commoners.

Feeling ill at ease, Honor decided that she needed more information about the Bonbours and their youngest daughter's strange union with a man who had first "lost" vital records on her parents' so called "accident" and later downplayed it by obviously lying through his teeth.

She went back to the "Times" search mask and filtered the enormous database for "Raskop" + "Circe Bonbour" + "wedding". It came back with tons of hits.

The marriage, wich had taken place in the Duke's palace near Twin Forks less than one year after her parents' death, had been a minor sensation, it seemed.

Peers from all over Sphinx had attended, and the whole event had been played in the media as romantic throwback to the hard times after the manticoran plague, when a Bonbour had last wed a yeoman's daughter for love.

She had to sift through a lot of flowery sentences to find something pertinent to what she now felt was her own "investigation", but it was there.

Dimitry Young, Earl of North Hollow, one of the few off- world guests at the celebration, had been asked by a "Times" reporter what he thought about the bride's choice of spouse.

His answer send a chill of foreboding through Honor's whole body- it read: "Sometimes, even noble families have to make sacrifices, and I imagine that after nearly losing his heir last year, the Duke wasn't prepared to renounce his daughter's titles for getting married beneath her station."

The "Times" newsie informed the readers that she found North Hollow's remarks "expectedly opaque" - the man seemed to have a reputation for nebulous comments - because she hadn't been able to turn up any information about Shadow Vale's heir having any sort of health- or other difficulties.

Honor felt that she knew what she would find when she opened a second search mask to look into the Bonbours' eldest son, and she was nearly instantly proven correct.

Pierre Bonbour, fourteen manticoran years old in 1862 PD, had been a fanatic aircar racer, who started in high speed competions all over the planet, and had reportedly earned the nickname "Hotspur" for his reckless flying.

Today, he was a Commander in His Majesty's Navy, highest authority on the light cruiser _Royalist_.

Her grip on the workstation tightened until her fingers went white with strain.

An air traffic control sector known for illegal racing, a lowly captain who marries the noble sister of a racing maniac nicknamed "Hotspur", after an unexplained crash in that specific sector and a total loss of data in said captains bureau... This was a smoking gun if she ever saw one!

She had to fight down an nearly irresistable impulse to jump up and run to the next constabluary station.

Being aware that all the facts she had uncovered could still be unconnected, any suspicions she had formed just results of her own bias and intense wish to clear up what happened to her mom and dad, didn't stop her urge to act on her conjecture immediately.

She took deep breaths and consciously relaxed her hands, folding them in her lap.

If there had been a conspiracy to surpress an investigation, if such old nobility as the Shadow Vales had really sunken to the perfidy of marrying their own daughter off to a corrupt traffic control Captain in order to keep their heir out of jail, then going to the Law with her thin hypothesis would be more than useless.

It would be dangerous.

And that may well be the answer to the question that had been burning away in the back of her head for the last hour. Namely, why hadn't her guardians pushed for a deeper investigation, why had they never mentioned that there was something suspicious about her parents' demise?

There must've been a very good reason for their silence, and she intended to confront them with her newly aquired knowledge as soon as she got home. Well, that was something she could actually do right now.

Honor made sure that she had copied all important articles and net addresses, then closed down the workstation. 

Standing up on slightly wobbly legs, she made her way outside and back to the airbus station on autopilot.

Everything that she'd learned was running through her mind in swirling chaos as she waited for the next lift.

"George Danton" and his sudden disappearance, the deceptively distinguished Shadow Vales, even the dubious North Hollow, who she realized, must've known what had happened to hint at it in an interview.

It was infuriating her beyond words that everyone involved had come out on top, while her beloved parents lay forgotten in their graves. It wasn't just an injustice, it was anathema to everything she had been taught and believed about the rights of all people in the Star Kingdom.

She entered the next transport flying on the correct route and sat down without looking at the other passengers.

Holding her bag tightly to her chest, she leaned against the window next to her seat and stared outside, not really seeing the cityscape, but planning what she had to do next.

It would be hurtful to face her guardians over this, especially when they would be still angry with her because of yesterdays argument.

She'd never doubted that uncle John and aunt Christine loved her, didn't even wonder about it now, but they could be very stubborn people. Getting anything they knew about the "accident" out of them would be very hard after they had kept silent about it for ten years.

While her anger at them had cooled somewhat when she realized that there might've been danger involved in pushing for further inquiries, she wasn't prepared to just forgive what they'd done, or rather failed to do.

Honor dreaded fighting with her guardians, but there was no alternative to it if she wanted to learn more.

The airbus descended for another halt, and Honor's unfocused gaze wandered about a vexingly familiar landmark, springing back to it without thought.

"Down with the King!" the red letters still read, and while Honor Harrington was as disturbed by the traitorous slogan as before, she felt a very small part of her, the deeply wounded and confusingly alienated one, reacting to the rebellios sentiment, if not the content.

She looked away deliberately and pushed any out of line notions to the back of her consciousness.

A quarter of an hour later, she walked up to her family's house, dread, last minute doubts and anger waring inside her, making her steps slow down to a snails pace.

She turned the last corner and was immediately spotted by aunt Christine, who was cultivating the plants in their front garden.

The thin and diminutive blonde smiled at Honor, dimples making her face look so lovely that her niece had to fight down an impulse to smile in return.

"Honor, you're back early," Christine said happily, while she rubbed the earth and dust from her hands and went over to the place of the sidewalk where the girl had stopped walking.

When she realized that her aunt intended to give her a hug, Honor took a step back and held up her hands in a defensive gesture.

"Please Christine, I'm in no mood for your touchy feely crap."

Her aunts face fell instantly, and Honor was slightly discomfited by her own hostile tone and spontaneous use of a swearword.

She didn't talk to her guardians in this way!

But now that she stood face to face with one of the people who had lied to her over the span of nearly all her lifetime - or at least deliberately left out very important information - she felt her anger return to her in a heady rush of adrenaline, spreading pins and needles through her whole body.

"I need to talk to you and uncle John," she pressed out through clenched teeth.

When her aunt continued to just stare at her dumbfoundedly, she punctuated her meaning with an agressive "Now!", then stormed past Christine into the house.

After flinging her uniform jacket and bag onto the leather couch in the living room, Honor went off to search for her uncle.

As she'd suspected, he was at the professional workstation in his office, probably correcting student papers.

When Honor entered without so much as knocking, he was visibly startled, but she didn't give him time to get angry at her brash violation of his privacy, and flung the same words she'd used to her aunt in his face, before rushing back to the family room.

She went to one corner of the parlour, ignoring her aunt, who stood in the midst of the room, wringing her hands and still looking dazed by her niece's brazen attitude.

When she heard her uncle's heavy footsteps entering, she had to quickly wipe over her slightly watering eyes before she turned around.

John Harrington's broad face was visibly red from agitation and his blue eyes were flashing angrily.

At any other time, Honor would've backed down at the sight, but at the moment, she didn't care how enraged her uncle was, because she was sure she herself was even more furious.

"What has gotten into you, young lady?" her barked, but if he thought he could just turn the tables and guilt her into behaving like a scolded little girl, he was in error.

"I know what happened to mom and dad!" Honor cried out loud, her hands closed to fists at her sides and a few tears leaking from her eyes despite her best efforts.

Her words exploded into the room like a plasma grenade, stopping her uncle cold in his tracks.

Blinking the tears of hurt and fury away, Honor watched as her uncles flushed face turned white as a sheet, a totally poleaxed expression taking hold of his square features.

Turning to her aunt, she saw that her single sentence and the biting accusition in her tone had an even more profound effect on Christine. She had clasped her hands before her eyes, whimpering softly as if she had been struck physically.

Her uncle regained his wits first. He swallowed visibly and one could see the effort it took for him to get control of his faculties again.

Going over to his wife, he embraced the still sobbing woman and whispered something into her ear, too low for Honor to understand.

A moment later, he turned around to Honor and mustered her with an unreadable expression.

She felt her stomach role at the look, but kept hold of her anger, fanning its flames by reminding herself of all she had found out today.

"What is it you think you know about Alfred and Allison?" he asked her coldly, evidently holding a tight leash on his own emotions.

Honor felt her anger rise another notch at his behavior. Did he really think he could bluff her out, only to still keep anything she might not have uncovered from her?

She decided in one twisted second to go for the jugular, to throw any caution to the wind.

"I know that Pierre Bonbour, heir to the duchy of Shadow Vale, killed my parents during an illegal aircar race." she declared with icy precision.

Aunt Christine moaned again, and her uncle's pokerface cracked like an eggshell.

Honor was on a roll now, she could feel how all the pent up horror and distress was transformed into cold steel inside her mind, a sensation that might've disturbed her to no end in any other situation.

But not now, not today. She owed it to her parents to get to the bottom of this, and if it hurt her guardians, then so be it!

"I also know that there was an extensive coverup, including the air traffic control data, Forestry Servicesatellite images and the muzzling of the only journalist who dared to report on any of this."

The temperature in the living room felt as if it had dropped to under zero centrigade when her last word died away.

Honor folded her arms before her, clenched her jaw and pierced her uncle with a look that clearly communicated "Your turn- and better make it good!".


	3. Chapter 3 First Payload of Truth

**Disclaimer: **The "Honor Harrington" series is owned by David Weber. This is not intended as copyright infringement, I make no money by publishing this story. I also know that Mr. Weber frowns upon fanfiction, but since this is an AU of enormous proportions, I don't think my humble efforts contradict the reason he gave for his dislike of fans playing in his universe.

**AN: **I'm pushig forward with this, please push me with a review.

Chapter 3.

First Payload of Truth

Uncle John just stood there, utter helplessness visible on his face, clinging as much to aunt Christine as she to him.

Honor might have felt some pity for her guardians, if she hadn't been so angry and bitter that the emotions were somehow turned into a cold ruthlessness that felt good, empowering, as if she could accomplish everything if she just used it.

"I'm waiting for an explanation, uncle!" she said fiercely, her voice cool and devoid of the love she normally held for the two people in front of her.

"Look Honor;" John Harrington stated haltingly, his usually brilliant rhetoric noticeably absent, "we never wanted that you'd find out about this whole mess in such a way..."

"Yeah," his niece cut into the words like a knife, "I gathered that you pretty much wanted me permanently ignorant of the way my own parents were killed!"

To Honor's surprise, it was her aunt who answered the challenge, voice brittle from crying, but still with the soothing tone only Christine could produce.

"Honey, that's not what John means at all. We were always discussing between ourselves when we should tell you, and we had pretty much decided to do it when you turned eight, ten Earth years after your parents' death and with you as a at least halfway mature teenager."

Looking disbelievingly from her aunt to her uncle, Honor could feel her cool resolve evaporating like water in the desert.

"What do you mean? That I'm somehow not mature enough to find out how my parents really died?" she accused heatedly.

"Just look at the unhealthy hero worship you've developed for your dad and all things military, Honor." her uncle took over the talking from his wife.

The words hit her like a punch in the gut, making her lose all semblance of control.

"How dare you! You lied to me all my live, you never wanted to talk much about dad, and now you use some psychobabble to justify yourself?"

She started to pace up and down the room, too agitated to stay still for another second.

Her guardians kept quite, just watching her vent her over boiling emotion through her body's activity.

After a long strained silence, Honor garnered some control over herself again.

She was too angry to think very clearly, but one thing had just occurred to her, maybe as a result of the grueling hours of research she'd done today.

Hadn't she planned to get answers from her aunt and uncle, not just rage at them like the unstable teenager they thought her to be?

"Let's table your overbearing motivations for a minute," she snapped.

"How much of my conjecture is actually true?"

Her guardians looked gobsmacked once again. Pictures of their faces from this day could've been used to illustrate the meaning of "surprise" to aliens, Honor thought with a certain satisfaction.

Then, her aunt started to chuckle dryly, shaking her head in disbelieve. Uncle John fell in after a moment, and somehow, as if through magic, a lot of the tension that had saturated the air just seconds ago, fell away.

Despite herself, Honor felt the tightness that had gripped her heart and mind relax a fraction.

"It's really not a laughing matter, but you've had us there, Honor." Christine said ruefully, as she wiped tears from her eyes, walked over to the sofa, and took a seat.

Uncle John followed suit, wrapping his right arm around her shoulders, than pointed to the comfortable armchair opposite the coach.

"Come, sit with us please." he said in a much friendlier voice than before, while his facial expression changed slowly back from shell shocked bemusement to seriousness.

She went forward slowly, then sat down on the edge of the piece of furniture, ready to jump up again instantly.

"As your aunt said, you've bluffed us out." her uncle said. "Pretty much all of your speculation is correct, at least as far as we were able to put it together ourselves."

He sighed, rubbing his temple with his left hand.

"Your parents' had to die because that young Lord was much too fond of racing powerful cars," he said "and when his family learned about what happened, they set all wheels in motion to suppress the evidence."

He paused, looked away from Honor, then added in a whisper: "They were entirely successful."

A defeated expression settled on his features, as if acknowledging the fact hurt him still, but had been inevitable from he start.

That made Honor's hackles rise again, but she didn't let her feelings color the tone of her voice when she spoke up.

"As I said, I'll put the reality that you never breathed a single word about this to me on the back burner for the moment ." Honor said, much more shakily than she wanted.

"What I don't understand is how it could even come to this day, with you knowing all about it."

John Harrington nodded slowly, his expression turning from beaten to pensive.

"You mustn't think that we didn't try, honey!" her aunt said pleadingly, eyes shining with unshed tears again.

"In fact, we did everything we could to get justice for Alfred and Allison." uncle John confirmed.

"It just wasn't enough."

"That sounds like platitudes to spare my tender feelings again," Honor observed, sarcasm dripping from her every word.

"I want to know what you actually did, and why that inbred bastard Pierre Bonbour," she loaded the words with all the contempt she felt "sits on the bridge of a navy ship, instead of the brig."

Her guardians looked at each other, then her aunt tilted her head forward nearly imperceptibly, and her uncle sighed deeply.

"The whole Harrington clan stepped on the toes of the constables in Twin Forks when we learned about the "lost" data, bombarding them with messages and visiting them every week." he explained.

"But soon after that "Times" article came out, every activity was simply stopped."

Honor listened intently to her uncle's words, as he went on monotonously, his listless body language showing how much fatalism he'd developed about the topic.

"When they literally closed the doors of the constabulary station in our faces, we went one rung higher in the hierarchy. Do you know who their direct superior is?"

She knew that she'd heard about it before, in civics class, but couldn't remember with all the agitation swirling through her, so she just shook her head.

"It's the district prosecutor. She listened to our complaints, promised to Look into it, and promptly forgot that we ever existed."

"How's that even possible?" Honor asked, irate.

"The law says that the responsible district prosecutor alone decides which cases to pursue," uncle John said "and anyone who wants the job needs a sponsor in the House of Lords."

"The Shadow Vales had her in the bag, too?"

"Exactly. The same goes for the "Times", which depends on the Bonbours' businesses to regularly book advertisements - they own lumber mills, the planets largest home-center chain and have interests in the fishing industry. They probably got that Danton fellow fired with a single screening."

His voice had gone lower and lower as he told the story, and when the pause after the last sentence had gone on for minutes, her aunt took the recounting over reluctantly.

"When nothing seemed to help, the larger family threw tens of thousands of dollars at the best private investigator money could buy, but he too ran into walls of silence everywhere."

Honor swallowed and leaned back in her seat. It was possible, she allowed, that she'd judged her guardians' and whole families' efforts prematurely.

"After a full month of working the case, the PI produced a single new fact. He'd collected billing information from every aircar repair shop on the planet - don't ask me how he got his hands on more than 300 datasets, we didn't question him - and found through running a computer analysis, that the only high speed luxury vehicle with heavy damage that checked in with a garage on the evening of your parents' death, was actually licensed for a certain Pierre Bonbour, nicknamed "Hotspur"."

Christine cleared her obviously dry throat, then stood up and went to the rooms minibar, where she filled three glasses, two with something highly alcoholic, and one with fruit juice.

When she came back, she dispensed the drinks, took a good shot from her own, and continued in a steadier tone.

"We went back to the district prosecutor with our new evidence and suspicions, but she always had "scheduling problems", was "suddenly ill" or just missing."

Some anger had finally found its way into her aunt's voice as she was forced to remember the constant snubs and lies the Harrington's had faced in their pursuit of justice.

"We send letters of complaint to everyone we could think of, from the centrist member in the house of commons, whom the whole Harrington clan had voted for in every election for thirty years, to the king himself, but nothing happened."

Christine fell silent, her face scrunched from the pain of never sufficiently healed old wounds.

Honor sat still, reviewing everything she'd just heard. Something was starting to bother her, but she couldn't grasp it. An important element of the story was still absent, but what was it... Oh!

"What did you do when that nasty Captain married Circe Bonbour?"

"Nothing," her aunt replied instantly "after all, love is a wheely wondrous thing!"

She laughed bitterly.

"As a last resort, we even tried to speak with that oaf of a Lord, Dimitri Young." her uncle suddenly spoke up again, his voice a tiny bit slurry from the full glass of spirits he'd imbibed while aunt Christine was speaking.

"But it was useless, after all, a yeoman family like ours had nothing that he wanted, and whatever information he possessed about the affair, he's still sitting on today."

"You just stopped after that?" Honor asked, aghast.

"More or less, we decided..." Christine started to say, but her uncle interrupted her in his increasingly boozed inflection.

"Nah, come on darling," he said, sitting up straighter on the sofa. "Honor wanted to know everything, why still hide the ugliest stuff from her?"

"John, you know that this isn't appropriate!"

"I'm sick of all the secrets, just take a good look at what happened today!" he insisted loudly.

Aunt Christine hesitated and looked back and forth between her uncle and Honor, long seconds ticking by in silence.

"I think you're hell bend to find out everything anyway, Honor, am I right?"

She nodded without hesitation. After all, what could be more horrifying than the things she'd learned already?

John Harrington wrestled his way out of the sofa, then stood still for a moment, getting his bearings.

He left the room for his office, but was back in minutes, carrying his workpad and a newly refilled glass.

"We've never told you before, for reasons you'll understand very soon, but besides me as your uncle and godfather, you had a godmother too."

He stopped beside the bewildered Honor, and put his pad into her hands.

The screen showed the portrait of a pretty young woman in the black and green of the Royal Manticoran Marine Corps. Her brown eyes were looking out at the viewer with determination, but the hint of a smile played around her lips, taking away most of the uniform's severity.

"Her name was Teodora Ganza, a close personal friend of your father's since their days in boot camp." uncle John said, after flopping back down onto the couch.

"She fought at Alfred's side in the battle that earned him his Osterman Cross, and he trusted her with his live. They stayed in contact when your dad left the corps for the navy, and met up whenever their duty allowed."

Honor nodded, eyes fixed on the youthful face on the screen, taking in the woman who'd been her godmother.

"She'd risen through the ranks and become Master Sergeant at the time of the crash." aunt Christine said, taking over the narrative.

"As everyone who knew your parents well, she was devastated by their loss, and even after all our attempts had failed, she stayed absolutely resolved to see justice done."

Honor could understand that sentiment very well, because it was the same one she had burning deep inside her, and she felt her respect for the Master Sergeant rise.

"What happened to her?" she whispered, not as sure as before that she actually wanted to know everything connected to her parents' death.

Aunt Christine stayed silent, then wiped over her eyes, where new tears had formed.

"Teodora took unpaid leave from the Corps soon after the Bonbour wedding, for what she told her superiors was a "family emergency." her aunt continued despondently.

"She lived with us for more than two months, collecting information on the movements of Pierre Bonbour."

Honor felt her head start to spin once again. Why couldn't she remember her godmother at all if she'd lived with them? And what had the Master Sergeant planned to do?

"Your godmother wanted to use the last means any honorable citizen of the Star Kingdom has to get satisfaction." uncle John said with unusual pathos and a heavy tongue.

Honor had the wretched feeling that she knew what he meant: Dueling.

"Teodora intended to meet Pierre Bonbour in a public setting, with as many neutral witnesses as possible, and confront him with what we knew he had done."

He smacked his balled right hand into his open left, eyes gleaming from a mix of alcohol and admiration for a woman long gone.

"She was adamant in her decision to challenge him to meet her on the field of honor, under the Ellington Protocol, in other words, she aimed for a duel to the death."

"And death is what found her!" aunt Christine snapped at her husband, then turned to Honor.

"Don't listen to his tall talk, honey. What Teodora contrived to do was an act of desperation, Russian roulette with her own life. Neither she nor anyone we contacted knew how good Bonbour was with a gun. At the same time, he'd proven in dozens of races that he had superior reflexes and could stay cool under pressure."

"You sound like you respect that blackguard!" Honor shot back sourly.

"I think Aunt Teodora's plan was the right one." she insisted.

"As I said," Christine replied much more calmly, "Teodora knew what could happen, that's why she was never here when you were awake. She didn't want to risk you loosing another person close to you."

Another silence fell over the room, and Honor was sure that neither of her guardians wanted to be the one who told the last - doubtlessly most appalling - part of the events.

At last, her uncle spoke up once more, his dark mood reflected in his tone: "Your godmother was a good woman, an experienced soldier and expert shot. But she also had a hot temper that sometimes pushed her to do or say things she later regretted."

"Did she try to shoot him down in the streets?" Honor asked in horror.

"No, nothing utterly stupid like that, but somewhere along the line of her investigation into his habits and favorite locations, she must've let slip a hint to someone who wasn't on our side."

She nodded in understanding.

"Only days before the date she'd chosen to accost Bonbour in a Tillingham restaurant, she was herself waylayed by a man called Derrick Simmel. He accused her in front of nearly our whole family and dozens of other people that she'd had an illicit affair with your father while he was already married to your mom."

"What?!" Honor couldn't believe what she's just heard.

"It wasn't true, of course." uncle John appeased her.

"But Teodora couldn't let this slight on her honor go, and she challenged the man to a duel."

"Now I'm completely lost." Honor admitted confusedly. "I thought she wanted to shoot Bonbour?"

"Yes, that was the plan. But whoever betrayed your godmother must've run to the Shadow Vales, who in turned hired Simmel to challenge Teodora."

"That sounds crazy, why would he do that?"

"You can find loopholes in, or perversions of, nearly every law, Honor." John Harrington said with a finality that shook his niece to her core.

"And there are always some individuals who are unscrupulous enough to shoot a human being, who never did anything to them, just for money."

She lowered her head, trying to hide her tears as she finally understood what had happened to Teodora Ganza.

"Using the dueling legislation that way is highly illegal of course, basically, it's the same as hiring someone to murder another person, but if there's no proof of any money changing hands, people can get away with it, especially if they are as well connected as the Bonbours."

"So, what you are telling me," Honor gritted out through her clenched teeth, while hot tears were running down her face and wetting her blazer, "is that not only did Pierre Bonbour cause the crash that killed my parents, but he or his family also ordered the murder of my godmother by a professional duelist?"

"Yes dear," her aunt answered softly, "that's exactly what we believe happened. And that's also why we stopped our quest for justice."

Christine held up her hands as she saw Honor starting to protest.

"You must realize that we had you and Devon to think about, as well as our own safety. These people won't stop at anything to get their way, and the knowledge you just got from us is very dangerous. It's a deadly secret if you start to act on it, one we felt we couldn't just entrust to a child, or even a young Pubescent."

Honor sat in her armchair, feeling somewhat hollow. She had started the day as an optimistic school girl, who may've had some problems, but who was content with her lot most of the time.

A single small article, nearly ten earth years old, had changed all that, had suddenly catapulted her into a world she didn't really understand, a situation in which she felt lost.

Honor Harrington stood up slowly and went over to her guardians, at whom she'd been terrifyingly angry not an hour ago, but who, she now understood, had just been trying their best to protect her from a family of aristocratic murderers.

She sat down between her aunt and uncle, all three coming together in a spontaneous hug that

affirmed their love for each other and gave Honor the promise that uncle John and aunt Christine would be there for her, always.

Late that evening, Honor lay awake in her bed, twisting and turning every few minutes, unable to find rest.

She'd accepted her guardians' estimation that fighting back against the Bonbours was reckless, especially in light of their outlandish wealth, political power, and the obvious absence of even a shred of moral decency to stay their hands.

Honor didn't like it one bit, but it seemed logical to stay put when you were totally outmatched.

She had promised uncle John as much when he had taken her aside after dinner, impressing on her once again the importance of keeping her silence towards everyone outside of the family.

What she couldn't accept was the contradiction between the terrible things she'd learned today, and her understanding of the society she lived in.

The Star Kingdom of Manticore was supposed to be a state under the rule of law, an agency that treated everyone as equal citizens, and guaranteed that injustices and crimes were punished.

At least, those had been the words of her civics teacher when she was in third grade.

The man, who was always friendly and courteous, had been a navy officer in his first career. He'd shown them real live pictures and diagrams of all the important institutions, and had explained what they did and why.

There had been the king of course, whom the instructor described as a just and kind man he had even met once.

Everyone in class had "Ohhed!" and "Ahhed!" when they watched a holo, in which King Robert played a math game with his fantastically intelligent treecat, ordered the captain of a shining new heavy sruiser to search for pirates, and finally promised every student in the Kingdom the "best education money can buy" and a shining future, if they only enlisted themselves in the service of the crown.

To Honor, it had seemed that a wise ruler was watching over Manticore, caring deeply for even the smallest child and the treecats in the woods, but also staying vigilant against enemies from outside, with the navy as his shield and sword.

The House of Lords had looked just as great to Honor, with all the finely honed traditional ceremonies, and every single members' holy oath to uphold the constitution and the rights of everyone.

Now she knew that one of those noble Peers of the Realm was the Duke of Shadow Vale, a murderer and obstructor of justice, that the king wouldn't do a thing for his subjects outside of „due process," and that the representatives in the House of Commons didn't lift a finger when their voters called on them.

Well, maybe those were undue generalizations, but she didn't feel like correctly differentiating at the moment, not to speak of the fact that she didn't actually know what other dirty secrets were hidden behind the facade.

When she went to bed earlier, her aunt had followed her into the room, and given her another firm hug.

"You mustn't think that all is lost, my lovely girl." Christine had whispered into her ear.

"Things might look grim to you now, but there's a whole universe out there to explore for you, and a lifetime hundreds of years long, to change what needs changing. Not everything here on Sphinx, or in the Star Kingdom as a whole, is rotten just because there are a few bad apples."

With a kiss to her cheek, her aunt had finally left her to her own thoughts.

The idea that what she'd learned today could fit in with her older lessons, that there were two scale pans, one representing corruption, the other justice, both existing at the same time, was certainly alluring and felt pretty sound.

She toyed with it for a long time, but it had one fundamental flaw: She couldn't be sure anymore which of the trays held more weight!


End file.
